Teachers participate in active shooter training

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District 204 teachers took part in an active shooter training session at Neuqua Valley High School last Friday. Nationwide concern about school safety has increased over the past few years, culminating in many schools taking greater measures to ensure schools remain a safe place.

The district wide training lasted roughly two hours and teachers and administrators were instructed by the Naperville and Aurora Police Department along with trainers from ALICE.

“Law enforcement officials recommend as best practice that school personnel be trained in ALICE to respond to a threatening incident,” Superintendent Dr. Karen Sullivan said in a district wide email sent last Friday.

ALICE, an acronym for “alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate,” is the “#1 active shooter civilian response training for all organizations,” according to the official ALICE website. Local districts such as Oswego District 308 and McHenry District 155 have implemented it in an effort to improve school safety and prepare both teachers and students for an emergency situation.

“We are trying to be as proactive as possible and be prepared,” Assistant Principal Daniel DeBruycker said. “We’re using the best system that the district has brought in to educate our staff and in a way introduce to our students what we’re doing to prepare for the worst case scenario.”

The ALICE system differs from the previously implemented lockdown response to active shooters. It is a more active response on the behalf of students and staff to decrease the likelihood of harm. Techniques include barricading rooms, clearly informing building inhabitants, distracting a violent intruder, and evacuating the building when possible.

Information about the purpose of drills was shared with students last week, but students will not be participating in any drills. Students seeking more information regarding district safety procedures can refer to the Q&A section on the District 204 website or the ALICE website.

This article has been updated to reflect the fact that not all support staff attended ALICE training.

Avani Shah is a senior and Headlines Editor for Metea Media. This is her second year on staff. Avani is a black belt in Tang Soo Do. She can often be found...

16 Comments

16 Responses to “Teachers participate in active shooter training”

killian kenny on
September 7th, 2018 7:39 am

According to a reliable source of mine, there are 3 types of red-card that we will be doing now: Lock down, Evacuate, and Counterattack. The names are pretty self explanatory, but I will still cover each to the best of my knowledge.

Lock down: The classroom/building is completely locked down and we all hide in an area of the classroom where we’d be (theoretically) safe.

Evacuate: The classroom/building is completely evacuated and we move to a safe(r) area until the danger passes.

Counterattack: The classroom (I doubt the building) goes on the offensive and attempts to disarm/subdue the intruder.

It’s scary to think that we have to do this, but our world is no longer safe for us. We’re growing up in an age where school shooting aren’t unheard of anymore, Columbine proves this. At this point I feel that if we are to be truly safe in school, we’d need armed guards patrolling the building and its perimeter. Regardless, we all need to keep both eyes wide open and be very conscious of our surroundings.

cow on
September 7th, 2018 2:17 pm

killian whos your source tell me its me cow from your dreams

killian kenny on
September 10th, 2018 8:18 am

My source wishes to remain anonymous. They don’t want their name spread along with my name.

cow on
September 12th, 2018 8:57 am

please killian I thought we were best friends its me cow come on I gotta know please we had so much fun in your dreams come on please it’s me cow

cow on
September 12th, 2018 9:10 am

please killian I thought we were best friends come on I gotta know please we had so much fun in your dreams come on please it’s me cow

Anonymous Staff Member on
September 7th, 2018 7:49 am

The article incorrectly states that support staff were included in this “district wide” training. This is false. Only faculty and Administrators were invited, unless Deans are considered support staff since they are not administrators in this district. The individuals that are usually referred to as support staff (i.e Secretaries, Dean’s Assistants, Nurses, etc) were not included.

darkstripe on
September 7th, 2018 8:29 am

at least it looks like it works better than “hide under a desk and turn off the lights even though school intruders are usually from the school in question and know the lockdown drill anyway”

a) If Killian wants to keep his sources anonomous, then let him.
b) This plan litterally will not do a thing. By lockdown, they mean sit there like ducks. By evacuate… what do you mean evacuate! Last I checked bullets travel wayyy faster than humans do so yeah, this plan already sux. Lastly, how on earth is someone supposed to counter a gun! Sure, all the teachers probably learned some moves in their training. However, either they already forgot about it or the situation could be a whole lot different than what they trained for. Even worse, trying to subdue an armed attacker when you know you might die is not very easy. Some people just freeze up and don’t know what they are doing!!

someone on
November 19th, 2018 6:23 pm

I still don’t understand how 1 police officer is supposed to guarantee the safety of 2800+ people scattered across the building at once in the event of a real intrusion. 2/3s of mass shootings have already ended by the time SWAT/more police officers arrive at the scene, so it’s often only the security guards that are already there that will have a chance to engage with the attacker(s), that is once the situation becomes known

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